'UPFRONT with Mike Gousha' recap for March 3, 2013

-- House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on Sunday's “UPFRONT with Mike Gousha” that Congress will pass a measure to minimize damage from the sequester by giving President Obama flexibility in applying the budget cuts.

Ryan said the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts represent just 2 percent of federal spending, and even with the cuts, federal spending will have increased 18 percent since 2008. The problem, he said, is with how the cuts are to be applied.

“So what we're not talking about are deep cuts,” the Janesville Republican said on the program, produced with WisPolitics.com. “What's wrong about the sequester is its indiscriminate nature, its across-the-board nature.”

He said the measure he'll advance will allow the president flexibility to apply the cuts instead to “low-priority and more wasteful” programs.

Ryan was critical of the president in his approach to the attempting to avert the sequester.

“I see the president doing all these press conferences around the country bringing attention to the sequester now in the last minute, in the final hours,” Ryan said. “Let's not forget he's the one who proposed the sequester, he's the one who designed the sequester in the first place.

“We approved it because it was the president who insisted on doing it this way to allow the debt limit to increase before the election.”

He said Obama isn't serious about achieving a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, claiming the president has repeatedly moved the goal posts in discussions.

“That tells me you're not as serious about legislating,” Ryan said.

At this point, Republicans won't agree to measures to close tax loopholes, Ryan said, as they already approved a tax increase and the president intends to use the revenue from closing loopholes to increase government spending, rather than to lower tax rates.

The House Budget chair said he intends to bring a budget to the floor in two weeks that will eliminate the federal deficit in 10 years. He said while his plan will still increase federal spending every year, it will slow spending growth.

“Now in Washington, that's considered savage cuts,” Ryan said. “We're saying, 'Let's get government to live within its means, let's slow the growth of spending.'”

– Ryan said his experience running for vice president has taught him a lot, but seeing the direction the country has taken after his ticket lost has been “distressing.”

“We had great plans, and now to see where the president is taking this country, the difference in leadership ... that was a little distressing to see,” Ryan said.

But Ryan said it has been “refreshing” to get back to his work in Congress and that his family life has mostly returned to normal.

He said he's more focused now on immediate concerns before Congress than a possible 2016 presidential run.

Vos said the mining bill, all but certain to pass the Assembly Thursday and head Gov. Scott Walker's signature, will help create jobs in the state while protecting the environment.

Barca said the bill will set the stage for lawsuits, adding the Legislature would have done better to pass a bipartisan proposal based on Minnesota's laws.

Vos said it's likely the school choice program will see some level of expansion but added he'd like full statewide expansion. But Barca noted opposition to it from several Republican senators and argued any measure that passes should require a local referendum to approve the program in a district.

Vos said the expansion won't include a referendum component, as that would put the needs of a few families having problems with public schools up against teachers unions and “those that protect the status quo.”

Barca argued without a referendum, the Legislature would be giving Walker the power to “be like a monarch” and impose the expansion on a district.

Barca said that the budget would “starve” public schools, while the state boosts funding to the voucher program. But Vos noted that the governor's budget includes an over $100 million increase for public schools.

On the governor's tax cut proposal, Vos said he supports the income tax cut but hopes to make it bigger by eliminating loopholes. Barca said he would like to see the tax cut more focused on the middle class.

-- Gousha said the beauty of the landscape in northern Wisconsin sometimes overshadows high unemployment rates there.

The Obama administration will unveil a major climate change plan Monday aimed at a large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's coal-burning power plants, a senior administration official told CNN.